As we usually do, we’re not going to pull punches. Will Folks is a world-class wuss. Coward. Dipshit. He hides behind his high-priced attorneys and the imbeciles who give him information, and acts like he’s hot shit. That’s most likely why another world-class coward and dipshit, Mark Sanford, hired this idiot to begin with. Also likely why his joke of a protégé, Rep. Nikki Haley, did the same.

Why Haley is lying isn’t a surprise. If you fucked that bald ugly fool, whether you’re married with children or not, would you want the world knowing about it? Doubtful. But as it came out, it made national news. As Brad Warthen would say, “the Wonkette” had some fun with the situation.

And this is why politicians shouldn’t have ALLEGED affairs with fucking political bloggers: they *will* act like children in the aftermath. (That, and most are ugly, too.)Will Folks, the South Carolina Republican blogger who claimed yesterday to have had an affair with gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, is having so much fun being famous, posting all of his awesome sex photos and what not. He posted this one today, writing, “Seriously … how funny is this?” Oh my god. “It’s a framed photo of Mark Sanford, Nikki Haley and Sic Willie following a fundraiser for Haley back in 2007. Let the bidding begin!”

Okay it is pretty funny.

Meanwhile, the evidence is mounting that some sort of hanky-panky did occur, but we want to be absolutely sure on this one before making a judgment since — again — this is a political blogger claiming to have had sex with a lady.

It was funny — just a few days ago we were asked to investigate rumors that Rep. Nikki Haley had an affair with Gov. Mark Sanford. Because we have no way to definitively figure out whether that ever happened, we declined, but added that there seem to be legit rumors that she and Will Folks knocked boots. Then the news of the week broke this morning with Folks admitting to it, and the stories are off and running.

The impetus for all this is because there’s been a story in the works for about a week and a half, which no doubt led to Folks trying to get out ahead of it. The actual tale of what happened is supposed to be revealed to us at some point soon — we were told that the story is so long and involved that it couldn’t possibly be done over the phone. So it’ll be good, that’s for sure.

Haley released a statement denying the affair, but we’re not buying it.

“I have been 100 percent faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage. This claim against me is categorically and totally false.”

The Free Times, which was running down the story, broke more news shortly before lunch.

Haley was married at the time of the alleged affair; Folks says he got married in June of that year.

Haley’s husband, Michael, works as a technician for the South Carolina National Guard and serves as an officer in the Army National Guard. They married in 1996 and have two children.

The source tells Free Times that on June 26, 2009, Folks called him, near tears, admitting that he’d had an affair with Haley and urging him not to tell members of the media about it.

Furthermore, the source — who is not affiliated with any South Carolina gubernatorial campaign — says former Haley staffer B.J. Boling told him Haley had confided in him about the affair around the time Boling was working on her House reelection campaign in 2008.

What’s this going to do to her gubernatorial campaign? Don’t know. But the timing couldn’t be better (or worse), with about two weeks until the primary. We didn’t think her numbers in the latest poll would hold up, anyway, but this will no doubt help Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster. It was his campaign that seemed to get hit hardest in the poll as Haley went up.

Anybody with opposable thumbs knows that the child‘s son has, erm, issues. Not that it would be odd for the jagoff that has to take care of him now. After all, the blogger kiddo of S.C. politics has been doing everything short of going to the corner of Gervais and Main to wear a sandwich board to get the dumber people interested in state politics to pay attention to his bullshit.

Apparently, there haven’t been enough of you paying attention to the child. Yesterday, he took time out from banging his head against the wall to write (God almighty):

Anyway, as we go about our business (gaining new readers and enjoying more success than we deserve along the way), we do think it’s worth stopping from time to time and getting your take on things.

Specifically, what are we doing right (or wrong)?

What should we do more (or less) of?

Are we striking the right balance?

And do you like where we’re going with this evolving new media experiment?

Of course, the child included a poll in the post, because God forbid he just get knowledge from what people email to his fetid account. And, let’s not forget that it looks like the anti-social whiner has pissed off one of his last backers, the S.C. Policy Council, a so-called “non-partisan” (yeah, whatever) group chaired by Rick Quinn. The second that started falling apart, the child started ripping Quinn’s boy’s site, The Palmetto Scoop:

Anyway, the Scoop has done precious little “reinventing” this week, though, as the website hasn’t posted any new content for four days – which is an eternity in this business.

Now don’t get us wrong, we’ll be taking a solid 7-10 days off during the summer – but you’ll get fair warning on the specific dates so that you can prepare yourselves for the unbearable sadness that comes from missing out on your daily FITS fix.

In the meantime, “whither thou, O Scoop?”

Goddamn. If Folks was any more needy, he’d be the kitty from Thundercats, sending up a signal to call Lion-O back home. So, by all means, please justify this asshole’s existence! Otherwise he might go back to fatty coffee beverages and fried chicken!

Thursday evening, the S.C. Senate Republican Caucus’ Wesley Donehue, S.C. Senate Democratic Caucus’ Phil Bailey, Free Times‘ Corey Hutchins, Winthrop University’s Scott Huffmon and the child got together for “Happy Hour” at Wild Hare. It ended up being pretty funny.

The tobacco industry has dumped all sorts of money into South Carolina over the past few years to put the kibosh on raising the cigarette tax in this state, which has led to some truly idiotic statements by the S.C. Policy Council, Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster and the child. At least some smarter people — among them, Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell — prevailed, and a vote to remove the 30-cent tax increase from the state budget failed 106-12.

South Carolina’s 7 cents-per-pack cigarette tax is the nation’s lowest and has not changed since 1977. A 30-cent increase would make the tax equal to Georgia’s and still 8 cents-per-pack cheaper than North Carolina’s. Nationwide, the average state cigarette tax is $1.34 per pack, with Rhode Island ranking first at $3.46.

Hopefully the Senate will go along with the proposal, and South Carolina can move on from yet another national embarrassment.

Finally, on Thursday’s edition of “Happy Hour,” the child throws on something that shows what he really is, a clown. Behold, Folksy the Clown. But beware of his inflatable objects — they tend to be not safe for work.

We’ve found ourselves perplexed over the recent months regarding the interesting political flexing going on by Steve Benjamin‘s campaign for mayor of Columbia. The man ran as the Democratic nominee for attorney general in 2002, and counts among his strongest supporters top Midlands Democrats. And yet, it’s not a cut-and-dry situation.

Benjamin hired the local political consulting firm Richard Quinn and Associated to run his campaign. This is the same firm who ran Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster‘s race against Benjamin in 2002, and is running McMaster’s gubernatorial campaign. Naturally, that’s giving Benjamin a free pass on RQ&A’s in-house blog, The Palmetto Scoop. Really — Wheels McGee has been at every Benjamin event we’ve ever attended, which is a tad odd for a GOP political consultant and blogger.

In the meantime, he’s also hired several people who were a part of President Barack Obama‘s campaign during South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary (Craig Schirmer and Laurin Manning, among others). Early Thursday morning, Benjamin’s campaign announced it would start running a radio ad playing up his Obama connections in the Democratic-leaning capital city.

COLUMBIA, SC – Steve Benjamin’s Mayoral Campaign broke onto the airwaves this week with a radio ad featuring a 2007 voicemail left by then Senator Barack Obama.

“I’ve saved this voicemail for well over two years now,” Benjamin explains. “It has been a personal inspiration for me because I still believe in what we can do when we work together. I still believe in hope.”

The radio spot, Benjamin’s first, went into rotation this week and can be heard on radio stations all across Columbia and at www.stevebenjamin.com.

This takes an extraordinary amount of hubris, considering that his consultants ran U.S. Sen. John McCain‘s Republican presidential primary campaigns in this state not once, but twice. Quinn Sr. was a close, unpaid advisor on McCain’s campaign for president in 2008. Then there’s something else.

Interestingly, the child, who seems fit to consider the majority of Republicans in the General Assembly as socialists, has been slurping Benjamin since the very outset. Baldy ran a line of smack against former Speaker of the House David Wilkins, writing, “Anyway, given how ferociously Wilkins promotes (and protects) his reputation as a “Republican,” we were a bit surprised to see him hosting a fundraiser earlier this week for uber-liberal trial lawyer Steve Morrison, who is running for mayor of Columbia, S.C. on the Leftist Lying Bastard ticket (j/k … it’s a non-partisan election).”

Mind you, he never says things like this about the Quinn firm and its relationship with Benjamin, even while assailing RQ&A when it comes to Innovista. It’s often said that a man is judged by the friends he keeps. Another old bromide is “actions speak louder than words.” Benjamin’s words try to play up his connection to Obama. But his actions in regard to people like the Quinns, Folks and Fogle say so much more.

And at this point, we’ve been totally soured on Benjamin, Morrison and City Councilman Kirkman Finlay III. Somebody put a call in to Aaron Johnson.

Earlier on Monday, we say a post the child did on Sen. Vince Sheheen. We didn’t pay it much mind, because we don’t pay the person writing it much mind. But, later on in the day, we were alerted to a certain phrase in the post. That line did ring a bell at the time, but there were more important things to do.

Sheheen doesn’t speak with an accent any worse than other well-educated state leaders that are South Carolina natives, but whatever. Witness:

That wording was used in something else he wrote — the ultimately failed blueprint to turn the General Assembly into Gov. Mark Sanford‘s rubber stamp.

Guess everybody not from the Lowcountry’s landed class is a bumpkin these days.

Rep. Nikki Haley has made her time in the House by bullshitting her constituents, who apparently haven’t been paying close enough attention or been getting involved enough to call her on her hypocrisy. Of course, her buds (Will Folks, the S.C. Policy Council, [because his boss heads SCPC] Adam Fogle, the S.C. Club for Growth, &c.) won’t do anything to show what a shit campaign she’s running for governor.

If Haley had decided to bide her time in the House, she probably wouldn’t be caught in so many traps. But, she creates them for herself and then steps into them and acts like nobody will pay attention. That’s too bad, because the House leadership is done with her crap. When you get called out in public by the leadership of your own party, that could be a clue that you don’t know what they hell you’re doing.

Tuesday, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Dan Cooper, decided he had enough and called a spade a spade.

For months I have held my tongue while Rep. Nikki Haley traveled the state touting her “opposition” to taking federal stimulus dollars, but after reading her Feb. 12 guest column in this paper I felt compelled to set the record straight. Here are the facts:

While the majority of state legislators opposed President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan on principle, we realized that if South Carolina did not accept the federal funds then the hard-earned tax dollars of the families we represent would be spent in other places, like New Jersey and California. In other words, we would be paying the price and getting nothing in return.

Rep. Haley knew that. This legislation was thoroughly discussed, and the issues were very clear. On March 9, Rep. Haley joined 107 other legislators voting for an amendment to the budget bill to accept the stimulus money. The very next day, she voted for the budget bill that included the stimulus money. On the third and final reading of the bill, it passed overwhelmingly with a voice vote.

It was only two weeks after she announced her candidacy for governor that Nikki Haley changed her tune on the stimulus. She then began to publicly question everyone else who had joined her on multiple occasions in voting to accept these federal funds. And despite all of her double talk, the truth is Nikki Haley’s rhetoric just doesn’t match her record.

Haley has taken steps in recent years to get in tight with the Sanford cabal. Now that organization is falling apart, she’s up the creek. It should be a lesson to others who sell out for for out-of-state dollars and perceived influence. Put your constituents and your district first — not political pals.

Well, isn’t this interesting. It appears that Rep. Nikki Haley is still hanging on to an unfounded, unproven and to the best of our knowledge, untrue rumor regarding her Web site. Remember when all that happened? It was in those fine times of the mid-Summer, when Columbia feels like the ninth circle of Hell. Our own apartment averaged 80 degrees at night. It was fun.

Yeah, so it was rumored that we were receiving inside information about Haley from Under The Power Lines, which had run Haley’s site before she announced for governor. Actually, no — it wasn’t so much rumored. The Haley campaign just went to their lackey, Will Folks, to put a hit on us and UTPL for something that had absolutely no evidence, except for the fact that the Haley campaign was then, as is now, dead in the water and leaking like a rotten wooden-hulled ship. That was piggy-backed on an earlier post of dubious repute, which led to what happened today.

Haley sent a Facebook message to Nancy Mace, the woman who took over Folks site and had a chance to operate Haley’s site.

Around here, we have a phrase for such nuttery: total fucking bullshit. Really, if there was any, and we mean absolutely any, truth to this allegation, it would have hit the papers and local TV stations months ago. But, it’s not true, ergo there is no evidence, except for a blog post written by Haley’s Internet boy.

Just another example that Haley’s a decidedly second-tier gubernatorial candidate that would have been better served by staying in the House and serving her friends at S.C. Club for Growth, South Carolinians for Responsible Government, the S.C. Policy Council and the last few remainders of the Sanford crowd.